On Human Folly - By the way, I would have put money on the Fredericksburg shooting being a copycat, based on the early reports. Shows what I know.

And now, to bed.

The Hell You Say - The passages in this Daily Telegraph story about local reaction to events is at serious variance with what Unqualified Offerins saw with its own damned eyes. Telegraph:

As hundreds of white vans are stopped and searched in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, small-town populations are barricading themselves in, waiting for the next inexplicable assault. Montgomery County's schools shut down immediately in the wake of the killings.

Restaurants have reported a significant drop in customers. Crowds at social and sporting events are also down. Carin Saez, a 27-year-old mother in Rockville, close to where the last attack took place, is too frightened to go to the shops. "My children are scared. They didn't even want to go outside," she said. Dexter Evans, also from Rockville, said: "You can't even walk down the street without looking over your shoulder."

This is all so last Thursday. Schools locked down, meaning cancelled recess and field trips, locked doors and, I think, drew blinds, Thursday only. "Shut down" makes it sound like schools closed. Nearly as I could tell, the killers were the only people who didn't get out today - every place we went was mobbed. I don't doubt you could find some people willing to tell a reporter they were scared, but watch what we do here in MoCo, not what we say. And "the last victim" at the time this story must have been filed was either the Petworth man or the Kensington Shell killing. Any place in Rockville is "close" to either place only on the transatlantic scale.

Unqualified Offerins apologizes for not getting to any "small towns" today, but this chagrin is offset by a conviction that the Telegraph's reporter didn't either.

Gosh this site is ticked, huh? So let's go all the way and complain about the writer's grammar!

All the victims appear to have been killed by a single .223 calibre rifle bullet, indicating that the sniper is an expert marksman.

And magic too, to keep getting that one bullet back! Let's try that again: "Each of the victims appear..."

Julian Coman. That's the guy who wrote the Telegraph article: Julian Coman.

Many Many Updates have been added to "This Just In" below. That item is now frozen, and any new material will go in new posts.

And Counting? - The AP story on NBC4's site contains this passage:

Tests conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms confirmed that the same weapon was used to kill at least four of the six victims of a sniper spree over the past three days in Montgomery County, Md., and Washington. Tests were still under way to determine any links to additional shootings in Maryland.

Italics, Unqualified Offerings.

Idle Speculation - Police have been pretty sure there are two men, "a driver and a shooter." What if there are two men, but they switch off? What if they're keeping score?

This Just In - 10 o'clock news says they've matched the bullet from the Fredericksburg shooting with the Maryland-DC bullets. I'll post a link as soon as I have one.

UPDATE: Here's a link, to Channel 4's report. It's terse.

For those keeping score at home, that's two nonfatal shootings (perhaps not for lack of trying) in the parking lot of separate Michael's crafts stores.

UPDATE²: This WTOPNews.com story talks about the famous "North Carolina man":

Moose said late Saturday afternoon that a 33-year-old Rockville, Md., man who had been listed as missing and who police wanted to talk to about the case was in custody in Fairfax, Va., on an outstanding auto theft warrant from Florida.

"We're having conversations with the gentleman at this time," Moose said. He stressed that the man was not a suspect.

The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., had reported in its Saturday editions that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had issued a bulletin for the man, who had lived in Raleigh and was described as affiliated with militia and white supremacist groups.

Needless to say, sometimes they just say that about not being a suspect.

UPDATE³: The Post has the ballistics story too. The Post story has a lot about official nonsuspect Robert G. Baker III, 33, of Rockville. Here's a passage:

Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose said Robert G. Baker III, 33, of Rockville had been arrested at a motel near Alexandria yesterday and was "in custody for an auto theft warrant" issued in Florida. For investigators, yesterday had started off with high hopes that there could be a break in the case, but Moose continued to emphasize last night that Baker had not been classified as a suspect in the District and Montgomery shootings.

"We want to talk to him because of the similarities," said Montgomery police Capt. Nancy Demme, a department spokeswoman. She said that Baker's whereabouts were unknown at the times of the shootings, which appeared to be the work of a sniper, and that he owns a rifle that fires the type of high-velocity, .223-caliber bullets used in at least four of the six homicides, which occurred Wednesday and Thursday.

Sources close to the investigation confirmed late yesterday that the missing gun had been returned by Baker to the store where it had been purchased recently.

Demme said: "We don't have anything that puts him at any of the scenes. We have no motive against any of the victims."

Late Friday, the North Carolina Highway Patrol broadcast a bulletin issued by the ATF that said Baker, a former resident of Raleigh, N.C., had been reported missing by his family on Monday and was "armed with a 40 caliber handgun and a .223 rifle."

The bulletin also said there were "concerns that if Baker was involved in either of the shootings in MD and DC, including the incident in [Virginia] Friday evening, that Baker may be moving south."

1. Auto theft warrant from when for what kind of vehicle?

2. Returned the gun to the store recently? What the hell does "recently" mean? Yesterday? (This piece of crap gun you sold me can't even kill an at-home mom!) Or before the shootings ever started?

Fairfax County police arrested Baker yesterday afternoon at a motel south of Alexandria after receiving a call from someone who alleged that Baker had stolen his mother's car there, a police source said.

The tipster said authorities could find Baker at a Red Roof Inn on Route 1. The arrest was made after a stakeout there.

Officers impounded the car Baker had been driving but found no gun or rifle, the source said.

Baker was being interviewed by Fairfax and Montgomery officers last night at the Mount Vernon police substation, the source said.

Montgomery police first expressed interest in Baker on Friday afternoon when a detective issued a broadcast to local police officers about a missing armed man identified as Baker, adding at the bottom of that broadcast the department code indicating a murder suspect. Friday night, Montgomery police sent out another bulletin correcting the first, saying the missing person was not a murder suspect.

"We don't have the right to tarnish someone's name, to tarnish someone's reputation," Moose said.

"We've seen situations in recent history where people have had their lives altered, reputations damaged beyond repair. We don't want that to happen here," Moose added.

UO did a little internet lookup for possible addresses for Baker, but since the results may be wrong and don't necessarily mean anything even if they're right, won't post them.

A man at Baker's home who identified himself only as a family friend said yesterday that there is "no way [Baker] is responsible" for the shootings.

"There's a 100 percent chance the cops will clear him. I'm sure of that," said the man, who was standing outside the two-story red brick and wood home. "The accusations are so absurd that right now, we're just trying to figure out what we need to do to fix the damage done to his name."

One of These Things is not Like the Other - Amateur detective hour. Since my sister reminded me of the police station across from the Shoppers Food Warehouse where the first murder occurred, my mind has been singing the famous Sesame Street song. Today's drive, which took us past the Safeway (first shot), the Mobil (third murder) and the Shoppers drove home an odd fact of geography.

The Shoppers parking lot slopes down a significant grade to the store. I make it maybe fifty yards to its edge, which is also the top of that particular slope. Beyond the top is the parking lot of the Glenmont shopping center, an L-shaped strip center with a Magruder's grocery, a CVS drug store and a dozen or so smaller establishments, plus banks scattered along the border. But between the Shoppers parking lot and the Glenmont Shopping Center parking lot, at the top of the hill that is the Shoppers lot, is Country Boy.

Country Boy is a produce and gardening store with, incidentally, the best milk prices in the area. And because it is a gardening store it has skids and skids of fertilizer, topsoil and mulch, stacked higher than you can reach with fifty-pound-plus bags of goods.

Where?

In a wall between Shoppers lot and the shopping center.

The effect is to severely limit the possible angles of fire and distances. You have to be in the bowl of the Shoppers lot itself, or just at the edge. It's not the easiest lot to get out of either. And the police station is right across Randolph Road. It's a divided road, but I heard reports that the police came rushing out at the sound of the shot. Even if that report is incorrect, the killers either didn't realize they were right across the street from a police station, or chose to take the shot anyway, either in spite of its presence or because of it. In daylight.

If they didn't realize it, then not only do they not know the area but, simply, they really suck at simple observation. The police station looks exactly like the government-issue red-brick structure you'd expect, it sits right next to a firehouse and - one other little thing - has a parking lot full of police cars!

Unqualified Offerings tentatively rejects the "didn't realize" theory. That leaves "despite" or "because." An obvious "despite" that comes to mind is that the killers had a specific target in James Martin, the shoppers victim, and killed the others to throw people off the trail. This has been suggested in numerous comment threads on other blogs, actually. But you'd think if you wanted to kill James Martin specifically, you would know him well enough to be confident of getting a shot at him someplace other than right next to a police station.

Perhaps you're a random shooter and think you don't have to worry about pursuit. This could be because you are yourself a cop, and rather than run, you appear on the scene. This is another of those theories that is more plausible in the TV movie version. Maybe you've just studied crowd and bystander behavior enough to decide the odds are with you if you act calm afterward - in which case we seem to be back to the paramilitary or "most dangerous game" mindset. Someone is either putting training to use or trying out stuff they've read about.

It seems to Unqualified Offerings that this is a risk that you don't bother to take if you are a political terrorist. The core principle of such an operation is that the softest targets are the best. You don't heighten the risk of capture at the very beginning for no net gain in the "message value" of your spree.

OR, you do it because the police station is there. In that case you have a grudge against police generally, or Montgomery County police, or specific persons or groups in that particular barracks. You want to make the cops - or a particular cop - look like fools. Or because you see it as a test of your mojo.

I ain't saying which of the above it is, cause I don't know. But I can't get that song out of my head.

Not the Ones Dead - In the bitter last sentence of "Out, Out - ." Robert Frost wrote

...and they, since they
were not the one dead, turned to their own affairs.

But as Frost himself surely realized, what else could they have done? Today the roads and stores and parking lots of Montgomery County were packed. They had to be. People need things from the store, they need to work, they need to see their friends. La Familia Offering saw much of the county today itself. The Matron of the Offerings took this website shopping for a real wood smoker as an early birthday present. Offering Boy had a classmate's birthday party to attend at Chuck E. Cheese's. People on the road, people loading their cars at curbs, people on residential sidewalks standing and talking.

Every single one of us a target.

But when you come down to it, what else is new? The Montgomery County shooters are simply the personified form of the strictest proviso of the life deal: you could go at any time. The surprise first heart attack that half of all sufferers don't survive. The vein in the temple that quits with no notice. The bullet in the brain.

Nobody did the serpentine run from car to curb. Nobody looked particularly defiant. No victorious swagger, because we haven't won. Best I could tell, people added up all the people in the county, all the gas stations and all the parking lots and got long enough odds against they themselves appearing in a sniper scope that they couldn't justify anything other than normal weekend conduct. For a county that's as caught up as any in the general mania for perfect safety that has afflicted the United States over the last quarter century, that's pretty heartening.

And really, it could be worse. Sarajevo - there's a place that knows from snipers. Beirut in the 1980s. Places where you knew for a fact that if you personally didn't dodge lightly enough past a certain spot you would be dead. Israel during the second intifada. Neighborhoods within an easy drive of Montgomery County where the same grim fatalism toward being about one's business obtained not just for one weekend, but year in and year out. There's a very real sense in which we here know nothing we didn't know before. We just know it better.

The Little We Know - According to the Post this morning

Meanwhile, a North Carolina State Highway Patrol communications supervisor said his agency, after receiving information from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, began late last night to broadcast a lookout for a man who is wanted for questioning in the shootings. The supervisor said the man was not described as a suspect.

The Raleigh News & Observer said a bulletin from the ATF said the man had once lived in North Carolina and had been affiliated with militia and white supremacist groups.

On the much-discussed question of a terrorist angle, Chief Moose says

As for whether the attacks could be the work of a terrorist group, Moose reiterated: "We are not closing any avenues. We are a large suburban community adjacent to the nation's capital. We understand what that may mean to people that may be looking to make a point."

Unqualified Offerings drove past the Kensington Shell station last night. It was easy to spot the vacuum station - it was where all the flowers had been set. UO thought, absurdly, how it never gets gas there because it's Shell and therefore too expensive. But UO often stops in the Safeway parking lot from which shots have been fired.

Megan McArdle wonders why everyone thinks the killer is so skilled:

Given that he's shooting for the head in all but one case (the lawnmower guy, who was moving, and where he apparently aimed for the heart), and probably from a distance, if he misses, he's likely to miss entirely. Meaning the bullet would more likely plow harmlessly into a building wall or the car upholstery, than wound. For all we know, there are bullet holes in buildings all over Montgomery County where he overshot his target, who never heard a thing, and moved on.

Of course, the police are saying he must be some sort of superpredator, but then the police like to make everyone out as a superpredator -- no one wants to admit they're being outwitted by Barney Fife. But this sounds to me as if its the randomness of the crimes, rather than the skill of the shooter, that's making him hard to catch.

It's possible. The problems UO sees with this speculation, which has its plausible aspects, are that guns still make a loud noise and bullets still have to hit somewhere. During the Thursday morning cluster there wasn't a ton of time for the killer to miss anyone with all the driving they were doing. Also, UO hasn't really seen the shooters skill with a gun adduced as a reason why he hasn't been caught anyway - there doesn't seem to be much controversy about the idea that the randomness of the targets is the main thing working in the killer's favor.

Montgomery County Update - The Matron of the Offerings just called to say the local 10 o'clock news reports that investigators have definitely linked the DC-border shooting from last night to the killings of Wednesday and Thursday. No further word on the Fredericksburg shooting.

I'll try to find a link. Right now, this has as much credibility as you give my mom.

UPDATE: Got it, via Channel 9's website: story and video (low-bandwidth and high).

UPDATE UPDATE: Listening to the video clip, which is headlined "DC and Maryland Shootings Linked," I'm not hearing any actual statement by Chief Moose discussing the DC shooting. It appears to be a video of the late-afternoon briefing. There have been, since then, one at 8 and another, to hear my mother tell it, at 10. However, the website text says, flatly

Police now say the string of fatal shootings in Montgomery County and another one just inside the District line are linked. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose says ballistics tests show the bullet used in the DC shooting Thursday night matches three other shootings that were linked in Maryland.

UPDATE³: Now Channel 4 has the story, with this chilling addition (from a gallows humor perspective):

Moose said D.C. police will join a growing task force that includes Montgomery County police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The DC police. Now we'll never catch the bastards.

One Step Up and Two Steps Back - You're probably wondering, what do the changes to Google's page-ranking algorithm mean for Unqualified Offerings? Answer: Not good. This site has dropped from Runner-Up of All Henleys all the way back to #11.

They'll rue the day they mocked UO's genius!

Weekend Update - On Day 2, Scott Koenig of Indepundit overtakes Glenn Reynolds as your best source for updates on the Montgomery County murder spree. This is the world we live in, where singletons in Knoxville and San Diego become the best places to keep up with what's going on in suburban Maryland. Today's Indepundit updates are mostly found here.

R00LZ GIRLS

So, yesterday I had that rare chance to experience what every girl dreams of: I got to hear what conservative America thinks of my rack, courtesy of Freerepublic.com.

Reason writer Sarah Rimensnyder on the...protective reaction of Ann Coulter's Pundetteer Club to her review of Coulter's book.

Meanwhile, Jesse Walker wonders if Coulter is even all that. Let us recall now those immortal words of Avedon Carol:

I've never seen Ann Coulter except in still photographs, but the tone of her words in transcripts is often sullen. Yet she doesn't convey sullen sexuality. What she conveys is a sort of drunken desperation, as if she'd go home with just about anyone. She certainly has bad manners. I hope to god she doesn't speak in her higher register much, she's bad enough already. Maybe if she gets drunk enough she's fun, but she comes across as such a harridan that it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to wake up to her.

Rimensnyder, to her credit, would rather keep the debate on the more rarefied plane of ideas. Unqualified Offerings is not so good at that, and will just mention that Coulter puts this site in mind of the classic Monks song.

Cat and Mouse? - Make of it what you will: the sister of Unqualified Offerings reminds this website that the Shoppers Food Warehouse where the first murder (and second shooting) occurred Wednesday evening, is directly across the street from a police station. It's still light at 6:04pm here. The radio station my sister listened to said that the noise brought police running out of the station. So the murder could have been intended to, among other things, twit the police. The other possibility, that the killers didn't realize the police station was there, would mean that they were both less familiar with the area and less observant than the investigation is giving them credit for. (Here a couple of former FBI profilers weigh in.)

AP now says the "victims were Hispanic and white; one was a native of India."

There is some question, but no conclusions apparently, whether a fatal shooting along the District Line in Silver Spring last night might be related, also per the AP. (Eh, says UO. After dark.)

Scott Koenig has continued to post updates on Indepundit, including some gentle chiding of UO's gentle chiding re speculations.

I should have mentioned that the Thomas Nephew link in the item below offers up yet another possible motivation.

Revealed! No News != Good News - It's morning and police

admit they have little to go on.

Police said they're not certain what type of weapon was used, although they said it may have been a powerful rifle. Authorities said they did not find any spent shell casings and investigators said they have not been able to find any eyewitnesses to the killings.

I'm increasingly convinced that this spree is, in the killers' minds, a hunting/military operation. There are no witnesses because they're selecting for no witnesses. We aren't dealing with crazed junkies, would-be martyrs or someone who wants to go out in a blaze of glory.

Other news: Local blogger Thomas Nephew finds a different racial breakdown in the Baltimore Sun, though who knows if it's any more accurate than the Post's breakdown. (The Post has an "about the victims" story this morning, but is coy about definitively naming the race of individual victims. If I were a nonwhite, non-male area resident, I'd be even more hacked off, as the Post may be depriving me of information crucial to my safety.)

Here's a Post story about what it's like for nonlethal drivers of white delivery trucks in the DC area now.

This Post story has eyewitness accounts, not of the shootings so much as the aftermaths.

Newsradio WTOP's website is another source for updates.

Donkey is Kong - New Jersey blogger the Illuminated Donkey has the latest judicial news:

Court Rules in Iowa Senate Race

DES MOINES, IA (AP) Citing New Jersey's precedent-setting "Competitive Balance" ruling of 2002, the Iowa Supreme Court today announced that Democratic Senate candidate Scott Scoglio, leading Republican Patty Moore by 15 points in recent polls, must reverse his long-standing support of the death penalty in order to "give Moore a fighting chance."

In the majority ruling, Chief Justice Zach Robinson wrote "Scoglio's 'tough-on-crime' stance has struck a chord with Iowa voters, leading to a race that has been, frankly, not that much fun. By instigating this shocking flipflop on a major issue, we're hoping to give Moore at least a seven-point boost in the polls." The ruling later went on to say that if Moore failed to close the gap over the next two weeks, Robinson would be required to appear on television with his arm around two convicted murderers and announce, "These are the kinds of fine fellows I'm trying to get back on the streets as soon as possible." Robinson is expected to appeal the decision.

This is the third recent application of the Competitive Balance ruling, following last month's ruling requiring Maine Democratic Congressional candidate Paul Silvera to wear ill-fitting suits, and the ongoing mandatory extra-marital affair of Nevada frontrunner Christine Woolley.

I Tell You a Joke!

Q: How many warbloggers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Today's Mark Steyn column is a must-read!

(We laugh in the face of death, here in Montgomery County. Laugh, I tell you!)

Rainbow Coalition - Gene Healy and Kathy Kinsley find a Libertarian Party candidate determined to break past the old, tired racial categories that have bedeviled American life.

And Virginia Postrel says the LP has nothing to offer!

Beancounting - From the WTOPNews site (via Instapundit):

Terrorism is not believed to be a motive. Race also did not appear to be a motive, noting the victims included a black male, a Hispanic male, a Hispanic female and a white female, Demme said.

Hang on a second. That's four of five. By process of elimination, the fifth victim is the Indian Prenkumar Walekar. That leaves us with a distinct lack of white male victims.

Susanna Cornett speculates of the shooter that

it seems likely he has some tactical training – he’s a current or past police officer or soldier, or possibly someone trained in a militia type setting. Certainly, at the very least, an intense gun hobbyist.

Here is my guess, some of it based on the statistical probabilities for this type of killer: I think it’s a man, between 25 and 40, most likely over 30, who is white and has military or paramilitary training.

pace Demme, it's very possible we're dealing with white racialist impulses, if not formal allegiance to a white racialist group.

Spree Graphs - Blogs4God is publishing such updates as are available.

Scott Koenig, while getting a little ahead of himself on the terrorism angle, has maps and descriptions from memory of the neighborhood, for those of you who don't actually live here.

Unqualified Offerings must register a mild disagreement with an aspect of Scott's account:

The killings took place between 6:00 am and 10:00 am. This is morning rush hour in suburban Maryland, and the roads would be packed.

Looking at the combined map/timeline on the Post website, it looks like the killers spent the early morning making generally northward progress from the White Flint killing out to Leisure World. It would be a lot easier to travel north and east in the morning than south.

White Flint (7:41am) - James "Sonny" Buchanan. Buchanan was mowing the lawn in front of Fitzgerald Auto Mall in front of White Flint Mall. (Strangely, every report says Buchanan was "riding a mower," but this photo from the crime scene plainly shows a push mower.) The killer could immediately cut down Parklawn, a pretty quick secondary road by Fitzgerald, or cut through the White Flint parking lots and achieve the same thing. I suspect a Parklawn to Randolph or Parklawn to Twinbrook route. From either Randolph or Twinbrook I'm betting they hit Aspen Hill Road to the Mobil Station.

Mobil Station, Aspen Hill (8:12am) - Prenkumar Walekar. Walekar was gassing up his taxi.The Mobil is on the southwest corner of the Aspen Hill/Connecticut intersection. IF the shootings took place at close range (and we'll get to that), then the Aspen Hill Road approach seems more likely than the Connecticut route. A little googling convinces me that Walekar's name is Indian, for those playing the motive angle.

Elapsed time between the two murders, 31 minutes.

Leisure World (8:37am) - Sarah Ramos. This is an easy trip up Connecticut and Georgia Avenues from the gas station. The Post says Ms. Ramos was sitting on a bench outside the post office. (Idle Q: Would it be closed until 9am?) There's a twenty-minute gap between Ramos' murder and the one at the Mobil station. That's plenty of time, driving against rather than with rush hour traffic. They could arrive and have their pick of victims.

Now the big gap.

Kensington Shell (9:58) - Laurie Ann Lewis-Rivera. An hour and twenty minutes between killings. It's a longish trip from Leisure World to downtown Kensington, but even in late rush hour it's not an hour and twenty minute trip. I suspect the killers took some detours, perhaps to avoid police.

Perhaps they were looking for other victims and didn't find any suitable ones.

Which brings up the question "What's suitable?"

The most likely feature seems to be a desire to get away. Go north of Leisure World and side roads and alternate routes get awfully scarce. You're looking at a lot of Georgia Avenue until Olney. They started the morning on Rockville Pike, but seem to have stayed the hell away from it after the first murder. It's a road where you could easily get stuck in a crawl of cars going either direction. They stayed out of downtown Silver Spring, where there are a fair number of cops during the day and where traffic and "redevelopment" also make escape problematic.

Plus, more witnesses. Sprawl really is the best defense against terrorism and crime generally, but these killers found its achilles heel - a lower density of witnesses. Staying out of downtown Silver Spring and downtown Rockville made it more likely, UO theorizes, that they would find the right combination of soft target and scarce bystanders.

The other obvious suggestion that they want to avoid getting caught is that they stopped their spree. For however long. If it's terrorism, it ain't a "martyrdom operation."

Rarely is the Question Asked, Is Our Bloggers Learning? - Maybe it's just Unqualified Offerings, but after the Turkish Uranium Bust, mightn't folks have been a smidge less quick to speculate about things like a terrorist angle to the Montgomery County killing spree?

Witty Title Withheld - The NBC4 news site promises regular updates on the Montgomery County, MD shooting spree that's been going on since last night. (Five dead so far.) There has been speculation in some quarters about whether this might be a terrorist attack, though it's simply too soon to say. (Offering Boy did not get recess today, which may occasion a certain level of terrorism in his school.) Since Unqualified Offerings is at work (in Virginia), updates from this quarter will be few.

Questioning the Authority - Little to no blogging today after this as it is UO's gaming night. Meantime, reader/gaming buddy Bill Dowling wonders if superhero team The Authority (discussed below)

are an active (as opposed to reactive) force.

I have the first two trade paperbacks and I can only see one instance of really being any more active than the Justice League (they overthrow a government for no reason). Everything else they do is pretty much just fight something that showed up a few pages earlier.

I know they have a Mission Statement, so they probably think they're "proactive," but that doesn't make it so.

I think the key difference between the Authority and other supers teams isn't an active v reactive issue, it's more of a follow-through issue. The JLA might fight off an interdimensional invasion, but they rarely follow the invaders back to their home and try to "fix" their society. The Authority will follow through, but they don't go seeking out such fixes (for instance, they know of a world where all of the non-black people were killed off and a totalitarian regime rules the entire planet. But they don't go there to fix it, they just send white supervillains there)

Unqualified Offerings if firmly of the opinion that it hasn't read the Authority yet.

Mahdi Squad - On Seablogger, Alan Sullivan praises Frank Herbert for working such a deep understanding of arab culture into Dune, and suggests that the lesson of the book is, of course, get Saddam. It's a good essay, even though UO did not have a conversion experience.

A Gridlock Called Hope - Glenn Reynolds continues to call it right on the Homeland Security Administration:

TAPPED is assigning blame for delays in the Homeland Security bill. But I'm not so sure that the word shouldn't be "credit."

Since I have never been a fan of this new cabinet department, I'm inclined to think that delays in getting it passed may be a sign of the system working as it should.

Best thing that could possibly happen: The HSA bill dies in a crossfire of partisan recrimination. Each side can then go on the talk shows and proclaim that its death has made the American people fighting mad at the other party, despite the fact that the American people will not, in fact, give a rat's ass (though they may, if pressed by pollsters, try to be nice and claim that they care). This is not a criticism of the American people.

How's That Again? - Jesse Walker on a new article about libertarian reactions to the war in the dead-tree edition of National Review:

In the October 14 edition of National Review, Ramesh Ponurru surveys libertarian opinion on the war. For the most part, the piece is objective and well-reported, but Ponurru's biases flare up from time to time -- for example, when he encounters Harry Browne's suggestion that the U.S. should emulate Switzerland. "This might even make sense," Ramesh writes, "if America were somehow able to stop being the most powerful country on earth." As the old saying goes, What the hell? If you're that powerful, it means you have less to fear from not sticking your thumb in every pie around the globe. Most people won't want to fight an opponent so tough, unless you've gone out of your way to aggravate them.

L'Etat, C'Ain't Him - A note for international visitors and immigrants still getting the hang of how things work here. George Bush is President of the United States, not the United States itself. A partisan disagreement with the President cannot be "perilously close to treason," no matter where it takes place. "Treason" is something one commits against the country, not against a politician, however much said politician and his partisans may be getting ahead of themselves.

And damn you people for making Unqualified Offerings stick up for David Bonior, for whom it has never had any use. Unqualified Offerings will get you for this.

Also, a refresher for the native-born: The President is not "our Commander-in-Chief." He is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. (You can look it up.) He is also Commander-in-Chief of "the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." If this happens, it will be in the papers. If you ain't in the uniformed services or the active duty militia, you ain't got a commander-in-chief. It's a republican thing, with a small 'r.'

The very best kind.

It's So Easy III - Sometimes they just give the game away right before your eyes. Unqualified Offerings mentioned the other day that there were aspects of Eugene Volokh's fantasia on what Saddam might do with nuclear weapons that were genuinely intriguing. But that's not what this item is about. It's about the way the mask can slip sometimes.

Volokh's premise is that Saddam sneaks a handful of nukes into the United States and uses them to blackmail President Hillary Clinton (a scary thought in itself), secure in the knowledge that either the country as a whole or the President herself are too weak or decadent or whatever to respond. Now let's look at the list of demands Volokh puts in Saddam's mouth, shall we?

1. Immediately end all sanctions against Iraq.
2. Permanently withdraw all American troops and military advisers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and all other Muslim countries, and agree not to become involved in any military action by one Middle Eastern country against another.
3. Stop all governmental assistance, military and otherwise, to the Jewish Entity, and all trade by American companies with it.
4. Extradite to Iraq the traitors, spies, and saboteurs that you are currently harboring as supposed "dissidents" and "opposition leaders," as well as the blasphemer Salman Rushdie, who we believe is currently visiting your country.

Whoah! What happened to "They hate us because we're free!?" Whenever war skeptics point to specific US policies that endanger America by rousing the ire of other countries, we're excoriated as naive if not dishonest. This despite the fact that, as Brother Healy points out, anti-interventionists were warning against these policies for years before the September attacks ever happened.

Given the opportunity to put words in Saddam's mouth, Volokh doesn't have him say

1. Become "less free."
2. Cover your slutty women.
3. Kneel when the representative of the Caliphate arrives at Dulles.

No, three of his four examples bespeak opposition to US foreign policies in the Middle East.

That's what we were trying to tell you, folks. (The laugher about Salman Rushdie is apparently just Volokh humming his favorite Alan Jackson tune.)

Unqualified Offerings invites hawks to commence the...forthright phase of their arguments for war in light of Volokh's perhaps inadvertant admission.

Live from Baghdad - For the latest, we turn to our man in Baghdad, Salam Pax of the Where is Raed blog. (Well okay, he's not our man, but he's a man - a fact which is itself worth keeping in mind.)

So what do you think is the most used word in our vocabulary these days?
It is ba3deen (for you non Arablish speaking people it means later/afterwards), anything that has anything to do with a decision that will affect the future will be answered with "BA3DEEN".
Example 1:

[salam]: listen… I haven't been paid the last two months and you make me work like a slave, how about buying me a better monitor than the one I have. It flickers.
[evil_boss_unit]: we will think about it 'ba3deen'.
[salam]: what 'afterwards'? after I have lost my eye sight?
[evil_boss_unit]: No who cares about you these days. wait until after *it* happens.
[salam]: whaaa? I don't…..ohhh you mean *it*. Oh I guess it's ok then we'll see what happens afterwards.

There's an example two, also.

Tommy This and Tommy That - Unqualified Offerings frequently sees fellow bloggers alluding to receiving "hate mal" or just "nasty messages." For some reason, that never happens to UO. The following letter is probably the single harshest e-mail this website has ever received, and even it crosses no bounds of propriety that UO would enforce, for all the excess of its conclusion:

It is not for generals to decide to go to war, it is for them to fight it. Nuclear engineers don't decide where we need new power plants they build them for those who make the decision. Generals have an attachment to their troops so clearly they might have a sentiment not to go to war.

To put any sort of meaning to generals not wanting war is just grasping for straws to be anti-war. My stance on whether we go to war or not is based on lots of issues, but whether ex-generals want to or not is not one of them. Why not poll ex-military personnel? Going to war is a policy decision for our country, and I don't recall you ever quoting generals concerning other policy. Are these generals fully up to date on the political ramifications of the middle east to our country and the stability of the world? What makes you think that they understand foreign policy any better than you or I?

Now if the generals told us that there was no way we could win a war because logistically we could not get troops there or the defenses in Iraq were to dense, then that would be a criticism with merit. But why in the world would I care about what they feel in terms of our country's policy in the middle east? They know combat strategy very well, should we ask them for their football picks? Their job is to command troops, fight for our country and know military strategy.

Your missive tries to deceive your readers into thinking that the generals' opinions should have some special sway, when in reality they are just persons with opinions. You should be embarrassed to display such faulty logic in your writing.

Surprise: Unqualified Offerings does not agree. Further surprise: Unqualified Offerings finds it massively wrong.

First, several of the generals quoted in articles that UO has linked discussed specifically military difficulties, such as readiness and availability of troops and materiel, plus strategic and operational issues attending a war with Iraq. (Here's a list of topics on offer currently for general officers at the US Army War College.)

The notion that one becomes and remains a general and a political naif both is...strange. Somehow we keep making them President and Secretary of State and National Security Advisor and Special Envoy here and Ambassador to There decade in and decade out - indeed, century in and century out. How did General Marshall come up with the Marshall Plan anyway? Why did Truman let him do it?

But let's put aside Marshall and Ike and Colin Powell and not just Tippecanoe but Tyler. It seems obviously unlikely that a general officer in the army of a nation that has strewn its forces from one end of the globe to the other, a man who must perforce consult with military and civilian leaders of other nations in the course of his work, because that's what generals do, there's not much leading the Imperial Guard into the teeth of the British guns these days, doesn't require at least an effective informal political education to do his job. It's structural. See this profile of war skeptic Anthony Zinni, another General who was tapped for political work by this very administration. Before that, he was head of Central Command, in charge of "36,000 troops based in Saudi Arabia, at a time of heightened tension between the US and Iraq." Can you imagine being responsible for coordinating all aspects of US military deployment in the Persian Gulf and not giving some attention to the relationships with and among the various countries where your men are stationed?

Characteristically, he began learning Arabic, read a string of books on Arab culture, and spent several months travelling to meet Arab leaders.

Before he retired last year, Zinni spent several months travelling across Central Asia attempting to improve US relations with a number of countries, including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

"War is the easy part," Zinni told the Washington Post.

At a guess, I doubt my e-mailer has done more to educate himself about the Middle East and Central Asia than Zinni has. And I believe you'll find that many US generals have undergone the equivalent of advanced degree programs in relevant subjects or have advanced degrees outright.

There's a further peculiarity of the current generation of active and just-retired brass. They began their careers as junior officers in Vietnam. That gave them an incentive to think deeply about the political implications of using military force, especially the reckless use of military force. And before hawks smear them as excessively cautious because of that formative experience, I'll remind you that they won that first war with Iraq people keep pointing to to show how easy things will be this time.

The effort some hawks have made to minimize the skepticism of some of our generals toward their clever plans has led them to denigrate these men in a way that the hawks would never have stood for if Clintonites had done it. Whether my e-mailer should be embarrassed for such behavior, I'll leave to him to decide.

Have Some Pride - Remember the classic SNL skit, The Sinatra group, featureing a bunch of musicians in a McLaughlin-like roundtable? (Look! I find transcript for you! Blogs have many fine links, yes?) At one point Sinatra tells Luther Campbell that "You don't need to work blue! You'll never play the big rooms with that crap. Ask Redd Foxx. You don't need the blue stuff, kid, you got talent!"

Unqualified Offerings wants to tell Scrappleface that he doesn't need to do the same sort of lameass parodies based on strained WWII analogies that lesser bloggers resort to. He's got talent!

It's Not the Settlements, a Continuing Series - Gary Farber finds an important article in Ha'aretz and draws the obvious conclusions.

UPDATE: Warning - Blogger anchors seem to be on the fritz again. Look for the Amygdala item titled "THE PERNICIOUSNESS OF THE CURRENT ISRAELI SETTLEMENT POLICY."

A Fanboy's Letters - Interesting e-mails re "A Fanboy's Notes: the Morality of Power" below.

Reader/Gaming Buddy Greg Pearson writes:

...in regards to Unqualified Offerings' superhero/villain post, the answer to that question would be Wildstorm's The Authority by Warren Ellis (another entry on my three best comics of all time), which is based on exactly that premise. True, Ellis and his successor writers are a rather more sympathetic to the Authority's ultra-liberal agenda than UO will undoubtedly be happy with. On the other hand, even though the authors find the team's goals laudable, the end result ends up pretty similar to that discussed in the blog.

A page describing the Authority series, which is on UO's list of comics to get to, is here.

Neel Krishnaswami writes:

I've actually played a game with this premise, and the characters do not greatly resemble super-villains (or conventional superheroes). The reason for this is that in the standard genre setup, a character can either support or oppose the social order. Supervillains threaten the social order with their diabolical plots, and superheroes protect society from them. However, this is a false dichotomy: it doesn't admit the possibility of convincing people to change society and creating new subcultures.

For example, my character was a superintelligent monster. Her response to being the object of hatred wasn't to lash out at society. Instead, she began designing biological treatments to make radical alterations to the body as easy and cheap as putting on makeup. Her reasoning was that people, given this new capability, would make use of it, and that subcultures would form in which her own bizarre appearance would be typical.

Her powers were very comic-book, but her plans are not. "Give people new capabilities to let them increase social diversity" is a credo that's basically impossible to describe as evil, but it doesn't accept the existing social order as desirable or worth preserving.

It seems like the important factor in Neel's campaign was that it was the people's own choice to avail themselves of the new powers available - they weren't imposed on them.

And your Talking Dog writes:

...freelance do-gooders acting to advance their own agenda (rather than battle specific bad-apples) are probably best classified as "villains".

Of course, your opinion is clearly the product of your cowboy American "rugged individualist" upbringing, and shows the defectiveness and inferiority of the American way of life, and its intrinsic ad hoc-ness and disorganization.

Thus, in the superior Euro-Justice League, the spirit of transnational collectivism and the good of all prevails at all times, ahead of the vigilante piffle Americans have come to admire.

A typical mission would consist of (Note: character names are simuultaneously translated bureaucratically from English into Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Greek, Dutch, Esperanto and Arabic; Euro-comic books are much longer this way, but at least they are only be priced in Euros, pounds, and Danish and Swedish krona) such characters as: Common-Man (like Superman, he too is an escapee from Krypton with superpowers, but he has renounced the use of them in the interest of neighborliness); Tall Dark-haired Woman (a cousin of Wonderwoman from whatever Greek island that chicks like that come from, but she prefers a more businesslike attire, and feels that since truth is all subjective anyway, there's no need for the stupid lasso); Flying-Mammal Man (like the other guy, except he is officially resident of Monaco, so that his fortune is not otherwised excessively taxed so that he can still afford the decent gadgets, which he, of course, devotes solely to the common good) and Cousteau-man (unlike that other water-borne guy, he REFUSES to exploit innocent sea horses to get around, preferring to hitchhike on French submarines). These Euro-heroes go on critical, world-saving missions, mostly serving international criminal summonses and warrants on notorious international criminals, so that NATO (or the anticipated European defense force) troops have an appropriate legal basis to bring these evildoers to Euro-justice.

I already have the comic books 1, 2 and 3 (Euro-Justice League serves an international warrant on Radan Karadzic, EJL serves a Spanish warrant on Augusto Pinochet, and EJL serves a Belgian warrant on Ariel Sharon.) I eagerly await the "Euro-Justice League repossesses Shimon Peres' Nobel Prize" and the "Euro-justice League serves a French information subpoena on Henry Kissinger" books; I'm told the last two are scheduled to come out later this year as the culmination of Denmark's EU presidency.

You know, with American lone-wolf vigilate "super-heroes", one wonders why anyone needs villains!

Indeed!

Poetry Sunday - (This poem was published by Poetry Ireland Review in 1993. To forestall any outbreaks of cognitive dissonance I should remind readers that I supported Gulf War I at the time, and for several years afterward.)

Kuwaitis at the Beach

Armistice Day, 1991

Pieces of what we thought was the city
litter the ground.
The scraps of metal, bright as money,
jutting from the sand,

don't even tempt the children. We could be checking
the serial numbers
of all the VCRs in the wreckage
of all the stolen cars

on Highway Eight, but instead we've come here
to get the best view
of the west, the holes in the government buildings where
the shrouded afternoon sun shines through.

We're the opposite of a Potemkin village.
They kicked the facade away
and there we were. The rest is a matter of salvage,
and what you can buy.

The greasy sky is as black
as American soil.
Children have built a sand castle
shot through with oil.

© 1993, 2002 by Jim Henley

Poetry Corner - Here's what purports to be the complete text of Amiri Baraka's "Who Blew Up America." The lines are short but the poem is long. It is not, repeat not, an "aggrieved black poet with dementia" parody by the Onion. It is not the work of Scrappleface. The link is included for completists only, since there's not much fun to be had in reading it. (Apex of literary achievement: "Who know what kind of Skeeza is Condoleezza")

Here's a New York Times story from yesterday by Matthew Purdy. And here's the surprising and gratifying part:

Mr. Baraka was briefly booed when he read his poem at the festival on Sept. 20, according to several people present.

In advance, UO would not have put good odds on the typical audience at a poetry festival booing such a poem. (Ask Alan Sullivan if you don't believe me.)

The New York Times has just posted a follow-up story by Purdy that doesn't get much beyond Poets say the darndest things.

Desert Island D*&#s - Unqualified Offerings is "blood on the tracks." And that's a good thing!

We Were Just Playing - This week's reading assignment is Killing Monsters, by Gerard Jones, and this week's assignee is Eric Garris of Antiwar.com, who, on the evidence of his imprecation against a new GI Joe toy in the Penney's catalog, could really learn something.

Deconstruction of Mass Weapons - Bruce Rolston of Flit weighs in. Gary Farber avers that he added an addendum to his original piece responding to Flit, but UO is darned if it can find it.

Never Confuse Politics with Current Events Dept. - As of this CNN.com story, we are officially past the point where you can believe anything you hear about the Turkish smuggling incident. Now we are told that:

o The Turkish police let the two suspected smugglers go for "lack of evidence." They've disappeared. (The smugglers, not the Turkish police.)

o The official 150g, nee 15kg, may or may not be weapons-grade Uranium - the Turks are having it tested at a nuclear research facility in Ankara and "the analysis was expected to be complete by Monday." (Monday is the traditional day for injured football players to get MRIs too, for those of you keeping track at home.)

o "Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright suggested the men could have been trying to swindle potential buyers. But he said investigators should try to determine both the source and the intended purchaser." Unqualified Offerings is by no means a professional investigator but the technique of releasing suspects to disappear on one was not in the Hardy Boys' Detective Handbook. It's been thirty years, but UO is sure it would remember that part.

o Q: Is swindling a crime in Turkey? Where's Istanblog when you need him?

So let's look at the possibilities, shall we?

1) Some Turkish cops and some foreign reporters got way, way hysterical over what turned out to be nothing at all. Odds: Decent.

2) The US and Turkish governments have decided that, on second thought, they really don't want people worrying about this stuff right now. Why: If they know a bunch of stuff did get through, or if they realized that the Uranium was destined for someone decidedly other than an authorized villain. (Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel all suggest themselves, though you'd think the Israelis could produce all the Uranium they need.) Odds: Decent.

3) They're playing the "released" smugglers, expecting to trail them back to their boss. Odds: Decent, but would be higher if we lived in TV.

4) This was a US/British covert op that went wrong. Odds: Non-negligible

5) This was an Israeli covert op that the US decided was ill-timed. i.e. Israel wanted to make it look like, oh, Bashaar Assad was smuggling Uranium into Syria (which is probably happening anyway) to get Syria moved up the invasion list. But the US just isn't ready for that. Odds: Small, but maybe better than the US/British op theory.

6) You and me actually ever find out what happened. Odds: Negligible.

Conclusion: Become a comics blogger instead. You get nice e-mails.

Smoking...Cap Gun - That Turkish Uranium bust turns out to be not kilograms worth but, well, here's Ha'aretz:

The refined uranium caught by Turkish police Saturday weighed far less than originally thought, an official source in southwestern Turkey said Sunday.

It was originally believed that the Turkish paramilitary police had seized over 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium in the operation that also resulted in the detention of two men accused of smuggling the substance. The actual weight of the uranium turned out to be hundreds of grams, a fraction of the initial estimate.

(Note: UO itself misreported the amount as "23 pounds" rather than 33 pounds.) Mind you, the Turks could be lying. Someone may have discovered a post-bust wish to minimize the amount of stuff perceived to be floating around out there. But the safest bet is always that the initial report is exaggerated. Note also that Syria (or whoever) may prefer taking their shipments in travel-sized quantities and it's possible that the other twenty packages made arrived safe and on time. Yossi Melman in Ha'aretz again:

Smugglers use Turkey's porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants each year illegally cross the rugged frontier on their way to more affluent European Union nations.

Nuclear Nonproliferation: Your official comforting fantasy of the new millenium.

Weapons of Mass Deconstruction - Lengthy dissents from the "weapons of some destruction" meme have been issued by Gary Farber of Amygdala and Thomas Nephew of Newsrack. Gary concentrates entirely on Gregg Easterbrook's article and omits all discussion of Unqualified Offerings' own earlier piece on the same subject, presumably out of politeness to UO, since Gary's piece is composed in a white heat. Contrariwise, Thomas not only discusses both pieces but wonders, darkly, if UO's WSD piece wasn't an unacknowledged inspiration for Easterbrook's.

IUOHO (In Unqualified Offerings' Humble Opinion) the Amygdala piece is one of those more heat than light entries. He complains vociferously about strawmen and wrong-headed comparisons, then commits some important ones of his own. Particularly irrelevant are his figures for deaths attributed to poison gas in World War I. As a commenter on his own site put it, it's akin to adding up all the deaths from bullets in the same war and concluding that Enfield rifles are weapons of mass destruction. Strangely, he and Nephew both point out that some gas and germ attacks can lastingly disfigure or debilitate even some victimes who survive. This is surely true too, but cue "Waltzing Matilda."

Gary makes a stronger argument when he cites some of the history of Japan's biological warfare "experiments" in China toward the close of World War II. (Epidemiological historians attribute deaths in the mid five figures to various releases of infected animals.) The apples-to-oranges problem here is obvious. China was not only one of the poorest and most populous countries on earth, but its infrastructure had been devastated by, depending on how you want to count the years, between two and three decades of total war, from the time of the Nationalists' rebellion through the civil wars with the Communists and the Japanese invasion itself. The appropriateness of the comparison with the wealth, population distribution and infrastructure of the present-day US seems strained.

Thomas has some interesting speculation about spreading aerosolized anthrax through a domed stadium or an airport terminal during a holiday. There again, you have to subtract - more likely, divide - the people who don't actually get infected, the people who fight off the infection without even realizing what they've got and the ones who seek help and successfully undergo an antibiotic treatment. What's left are the people who die, and, as Thomas and Gary point out, the debilitated. That's if a conspiracy to smuggle that much aerosolized anthrax into the country, get access to the ventilation systems at such facilities and successfully disperse the agent succeeds. Admittedly, the terrorists would be opposed by the CIA and FBI, so they have that working in their favor.

When all is said and done, you probably have about as many kills as the Trade Center attacks caused. And that leads to the part of Farber's and Nephew's argument that UO considers a misimpression on their part. Nephew puts it well:

So bad guys could use anthrax, or they could use something else. This is not comforting.

Well, as they say, duh. But I think both of them are confusing an argument that "These are not inordinately effective" with "These are not effective at all."

Let's suppose that Saddam's air force is or becomes able to make a fuel-air bomb. Hell, let's just suppose that he (or Bin Laden, for those of you who can't tell them apart) buys one off some freelancing Russian colonel. Now, since we're scaring ourselves, combine: a suicide bomber, a fuel-air bomb, a truck or a small plane, an American city. I daresay that when it's all over you'll not only have at least as many dead as in Thomas's holiday germ attack, you'll also have quite a few folks who have been, to paraphrase Gary's account of some nonlethal casualties of gas, blinded for life, had most of their lungs burnt out and scarred (I think he means literally scarred) for life - and some more who, like Thomas' anthrax victiims, suffer "from fatigue, memory loss, and shortness of breath." (Post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

To read this as "Jim says don't worry about gas and germs" is to miss the point, which is that a sober estimation of threats is your friend.

Lastly, UO doubts that Easterbrook was cribbing from Unqualified Offerings, so much so that it assumes that no cribbing took place unless it gets demonstrated otherwise. But it's nice to be loved.